He broke Sadaharu Oh's home run record in Japan. Now he's on pace for even more in the Majors.
Munetaka Murakami just keeps bashing home runs. After three more over the weekend, Murakami is already up to eight homers in his first MLB season -- tied for third-most in the Majors, behind only Yordan Alvarez (10) and Aaron Judge (nine).
If you thought Murakami's 56 home runs for the Tokyo Yakult Swallows in 2022 were a lot (that's when he surpassed Oh's NPB mark for the most homers in a single season by a Japanese-born player) ... well, Murakami is currently on a 58-homer pace for the White Sox.
Murakami's eight homers through his first 22 MLB games are twice as many as any other Japanese player has ever had -- Shohei Ohtani, Seiya Suzuki and Masataka Yoshida each hit four through their first 22 games in the big leagues.
Here are three quick things to know about Murakami's power surge.
1) He's hitting the ball really, really hard
More than 200 hitters have put at least 40 balls in play this season. Out of all those hitters, Murakami's 95 mph average exit velocity is tied for fourth-highest, behind only Oneil Cruz (97.5 mph), James Wood (96.2 mph) and Jac Caglianone (95.1 mph). But even more importantly, Murakami's barrel rate -- basically, how often he hits the ball both hard and in the air -- is also top five in the Majors, putting Murakami in a group of star sluggers.
Highest barrel rate in 2026
(minimum 40 batted balls)
- Aaron Judge: 28.3%
- James Wood: 27.8%
- Shohei Ohtani: 26.3%
- Munetaka Murakami: 26.2%
- Mike Trout: 25.9%
Murakami is hitting tons of fly balls, and when he hits the ball in the air, he's going to crush it hard enough to drive it out of the ballpark.
2) He can hit velocity after all
One of the big questions about Murakami when he came to the Majors from Japan was whether he'd be able to hit the higher velocity from MLB pitchers. Well, he answered that question with one huge swing this weekend.
Murakami crushed a 114.1 mph, 431-foot grand slam over the batter's eye in dead center field against the A's in Sacramento. That monster grand slam came against a 98.2 mph fastball from A’s reliever Elvis Alvarado. So much for not being able to hit high velocity.
In fact, Murakami's grand slam was one of only 14 home runs hit 114 mph or harder off a 98-plus mph fastball in the entire Statcast era, which goes back to 2015.
Just hitting a single home run that hard is notable, let alone a home run that hard off a pitch that fast. Oh, and two days after that slam, Murakami hit another home run just as hard -- a 114.1 mph, 425-foot moonshot in Sunday's series finale.
Only eight hitters this season have hit even one home run 114 mph or harder. The others are Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge, Mike Trout, Yordan Alvarez, James Wood, Nick Kurtz and Logan O'Hoppe. But only one hitter has hit more than one homer that hard: Munetaka Murakami.
3) He looks a lot like Kyle Schwarber
Murakami is what we call a "Three True Outcome" hitter -- those are home runs, walks and strikeouts, which have accounted for nearly two-thirds of Murakami's plate appearance results so far this season.
He's among the MLB leaders in all three categories: tied for third in home runs (eight), third in walks (20) and tied for eighth in strikeouts (31). The home runs and walks are great. The strikeouts, not so great.
But you know who has an offensive profile that looks a lot like Murakami's right now? That's right, Schwarber. And we all know how good Schwarber is.
Those are Murakami and Schwarber's MLB rankings in the various Statcast hitting metrics. More red is good. And there's a lot of red -- across all the key power-hitting stats like exit velo, hard-hit rate, barrel rate and bat speed, as well as plate discipline stats like walk rate and chase rate. You can't ignore the whiff rate and strikeout rate, but the point is, right now, Murakami's slugging prowess is significantly outweighing his K's.
It would be great if Murakami could cut down on the swing-and-miss and strikeout totals. But if he still resembles Schwarber at the end of the season, you're looking at a very dangerous hitter.